SBC 2022 Festival:
Illuminations
August 8-20, 2022

Festival concerts on August 9, 12, 16, and 19 at Lincoln Theater

Dear Friends,

Illuminations, Salt Bay Chamberfest’s upcoming 28th season in 2022, offers a powerful combination of artistic elements that enlighten and transform. Light appears on every program literally through video projections that accompany live music, and symbolically through the radiant works of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Dvořák.

Our featured projections create a stimulating visual-auditory experience for the audience:

The Story of Aoyagi (on August 9) is a ghost tale told through Japanese poetry and solo marimba, arranged by marimbist Makoto Nakura.

Home Within (on August 12) is a special project by Syrian composer and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and visual artist Kevork Mourad. As the creators explain, the artist and musician develop their ideas in real time, “in counterpoint to each other, creating an impressionistic reflection on the Syrian revolution and its aftermath.”

In Trajectories (on August 16), Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is paired with video projection by Sigurður Guðjónsson, creating a haunting abstraction of time and light.

Vespers (on August 19), Missy Mazzoli’s piece for solo violin, illustrates and enhances a provocative short film by James Darrah.

The projections will be further enhanced by the music that surrounds them on a given program. Light as metaphor imbues the music of Dvořák in his Piano Quintet, which smiles and sings amid sighs; Mendelssohn, whose brooding Piano Trio No. 2 undergoes a transformation to joy and triumph; and Schumann, whose Piano Quartet leaves us with hope and affirmation to close the Festival.

Illuminations will also explore light’s inverse, darkness, through musical pieces that respond to loss and sorrow. Works such as Rachmaninoff’s second Trio élégiaque, Osvaldo Golijov’s Mariel, and Bruce Adolphe’s Are There Not a Thousand Forms of Sorrow? (an SBC commission) reveal a shared human experience, transforming darkness into poignant reflection.

Bringing this music to light are some of the most sought-after musicians of our time, including musicians of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, violinist Jennifer Koh, pianists Ignat Solzhenitsyn and Thomas Sauer, marimbist Makoto Nakura, and the Horszowski Piano Trio. There could not be a more fitting place than Maine’s coast, with its many lighthouses illuminating dramatic and sublime shores, to experience a festival of Illuminations through music and art.